amawill

Hi all

I know this has been discussed before but can't find it so we have our reccie booked to Nova Scotia (yipppppeeeee) . Now wondering which would be better/cheaper - hire an rv or car hire and accomodation. Want to see as much of ns as we can. We are of the thinking the rv option gives more flexibilty? All thoughts gratefully appreciated as always.

dbd33

If you go with the RV people will hate you. They're as easy to pass as a Gypsy caravan.

iaink

On the down side an RV will use a lot more gas, and be a pain in the arse to manouver around in town and park up in normal spots... There is a reason that people who own RVs often tow a car around behind them to use once they get where they are going. Once set up in the RV park its a pain to unhook everything to pop down to the shops, or go check out the local attractions.

An RV will also take a lot longer to get from A to B...this might be an advantage, but then again, it might not, depending what you are aiming to see and do.

You also have to be careful when renting an RV that they allow a decent millage before starting to charge for the excess. Some well know national renters allow only a paltry 100km a day before they start to charge 30c per km, which rather negates any savings on accomodation...

The RV will only really be an advantage if you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no accomodation in sight...and even then its often frowned upon by the police to just park up at the side of the road (at least in Ontario...dont know about NS).

amawill

thank you as always its looking like car and motel

Paul Wildy

yeah, I've sort of gone off the idea of RVs. I thought they sounded great but when I looked into it I discovered that they are so expensive to rent that its actually cheaper to rent a car and check into fairly decent hotels each night. And (as per above post) you cant stop anywhere - you still have to find an RV park. And I wouldnt want to have to pack everything up to drive down to the shop for some milk.

destinationnovascotia

We toured Ontario in an RV.

The plus side was that when we moved to a new location we were set up and had the kettle on in minutes. No packing and unpacking to do was a bonus. It was also good that the children had a table between them when we went on a long journey. It gave them somewhere to put a game and stopped them beating the c**p out of each other when they were bored.

The down side was firstly the amount of gas we used was huge. It just went nowhere. The other down side...and it was a biggie...was having to go everywhere in it. You can't drive under barriers into car parks, you have to unhook the electric/water/sewerage every time you want to go anywhere, the manouverability is poor which is especially a pain when you don't know your way around and are prone to going the wrong way - 52 point turns don't make you popular with the locals.

On the whole I would was unless you only want to visit rural areas, go with the car. You could always take a small tent for versatility and to economize a bit and stay on hotels the rest of the time. Holiday lets are also an option if you see your self spending a week in one area.

Sockdogg

Hi there,

We hired an RV last June when we came out to NS. We came out for a little over 2 weeks and we did about 5 days in a cottage and the rest on the road!

I'm glad we hired the RV but it was expensive and although I didn't do any of the driving I absolutely agree that town driving was a pain when we had to find somewhere to park the beast.

Overall though it changed our holiday completely as it gave us more freedom to move onto where ever we wanted to go and it was nice that we didn't have to book accommodation in advance. We just researched all the camp grounds with hook ups and took our pick of the places we wanted to go.

Hope this helps

Sockdogg

iaink

I guess a lot depends how hard accomodation would be to pick up on spec just driving around. We went to Nevada/ Utah and hired a car and just drove around finding accomodation without booking ahead...it was a bit nerve wracking as it got dark in the middle of nowhere, but we always seemed to find a one horse town with a reasonable Motel in the end. Probably wouldnt do that now with kids in tow though.

Surely though there is the same danger that RV parks will fill up too, unless you are booking ahead anyway?


I can see taking an RV as an option if that's going to be part of the "holiday experience", or you have a large family that would add a lot to your accomodation costs, but if its a serious emmigration reccee trip, then it could just become an additional distraction/hassle I suspect.

Piff Poff

We did the RV thing on our recce and loved it! We went all over the place, as and when we felt like it (we reccied in June so nowhere was busy). We liked it so much we went on to buy a Motorhome here - which we have now sold because it was sooooo expensive to run and all the campgrounds were full if we just took off for the weekend (we had a much older model than what you would rent).

We have now got a travel trailer (caravan) to renovate and probably use next year, we may book a permanent site for the summer though so we can be sure we have somewhere to go.

Flogger

What Berth would you need?
We hired a six berth to tour around Norway and Sweden and it was fine, no probs.
they ain't that big, slightly bigger than a normal van.
Should also add that may be slightly biased.Ihave owned two VW campers and every year suggest a holiday away in the van
Every year i get told no

charlie1

We did one recce using a small tent and using campgrounds, especially in NS there are campgrounds everywhere, it is a much more popular pastime than in the UK and they all have modern conveniences and facilities if you want them